2022 Make It Modular Project - Vasquez, Guadalupe

Hello and Welcome! My name is Guadalupe Vasquez and I am a senior from Ferris High School, Ferris, Texas. I found this project to be very fun and enjoyable.

I have always felt inspired to make the world a better place to live in. Therefore, this project was perfect! It let me express my ideas on how to reuse shipping containers to create new buildings.

Many ideas came to mind but only one stuck with was, Building A Restaurant. I never would've thought to create a restaurant out of containers, but I liked how the outside of the container looked.

I based my restaurant off of hispanic styled buildings. I love how Mexican restaurants look from the outside and inside; very vibrant and happy. I also love lots of natural light; that's why part of my roof is made out of glass.

There could be more to do with the place such as add a seating area outside, add vegetation outside and inside, add exit doors incase of emergencies, outer lighting and etc, but this is just the beginning for me.

OK Time to get to the real process!

Many of the supplies can be bought from any home decor store or . Such as the chairs, tables, sofas, and paintings. But the supplies that cannot be found in a home decor store are the following:

• Shipping Containers (6)
• Wood
• Paint
• Toilets
• Lavatory Sinks
• Glass
• Windows

The first step would be to lay down a concrete foundation. My foundation is 37' x 30'. A foundation sets up the location for a stronger building.

I used 6 shipping containers for this project. Two are joined together to make one long..... I did this for two sides, the front and the back. One the left and right sides, I just used one shipping container for both.

I placed the front and back containers horizontally while the side containers are facing vertically. Each container has a width of 8', length of 20', and a height of around 9'.

I really love the rigid detail of the container!

For the restroom (rectangle top-left) I just used regular wood to build it. 12' x 16'.

The color palette I was going for consisted of bright, happy colors. These just remind me of when I visited my parents home in Mexico.

All of the windows for the sides are the same length and width, 3' x 4'. The front windows are 5' x 4'. For the front entrance there are double doors. Both are 5' x 6'.

There was a picture I was inspired by and these beautiful arches were placed inside the building. I love how they add a bit of flavor and spice to the restaurant. The width of the arches are 3.25'. The height is 6.5'.

In the lobby area there is a black reception desk and couple of sofas. Going on with the vibrant, happy colors, I chose the sofas to be different in respect to the rest of the neutral colored restaurant.

The placement of the tables and chairs is not very important. I would just place them where there is enough space for the people to get in and out, where there is no blocking of areas, such as the restroom. All the tables are the same size, 3' x 3'.

I also included electrical fans just in case it's hot. :)

The kitchen is located at the back of the restaurant. It has range burners, a couple storage compartments, a sink, and a freezer/refrigerator. Inside the refrigerator there are places where you could store food/ingredients.

There is also two doors connected to this room. One of the doors is to go to the restrooms and the other to go into the main dining area.

The restroom is at the very back left corner of the building. And this is because it has more space for at least 2 restrooms. There is a door that heads from the main building to the back area and a door from the kitchen to the same area. I decided to add a desk, chair and painting at the very back part of the restroom area.

This is because it could be used by someone waiting for the restroom or taking an important phone call or anything else. The painting just added more vibrant colors to the area to make it happy.

The roof was the most complicating part of it all! I wanted part of my roof to be transparent and the other part to be Spanish tiles. I would accomplish a transparent roof by using glass. But the problem was that I didn't know how to incorporate both white still looking good.

At the end I came up with the solution of angeling the top part of the container slightly to 15 degrees. This would be the Spanish tile mock-up. Also the angle of the roof would be ideal for bad weather conditions.

I decided to build a porch in front of the main building because I liked how it looked, could be used as shade, or could also be used by placing benches or a seating area underneath it.

But to build the columns we are going to need wood or stone and cement. I used cement blocks for a more sturdy column. Then connect the roof with the columns with more wood. These are more thin and long, also angled.

Paint all the wood in a dark burnt orange.

Enjoy these pictures!!